War Wounds
by I Am Definitely Jeff Bridges
Summary: The scars of Percy Jackson, how he got them, and what each one has taught him.


**War Wounds**

This one's from Gabe.

Well, he's the obvious place to start, isn't he? Chronological order seems like a sensible way to do this, and he's probably responsible for a lot of these. Might as well get them out of the way quickly.

It's from a beer bottle, a broken one. Gabe picked it up off from where it was lying on the floor, and hurled it. Barely even looked up at the cry of pain. Lucky it only caught the shoulder, really. It was deep and hurt like Hades at the time, but it could always have been worse.

This one... well, Gabe again, of course. His fists were doing most of the work, but then they always were his most eloquent part. And if there are fists in front of you, then the most sensible thing to do is back away, but in an apartment like that, full of Gabe's old DIY projects that he did the first five minutes of and then abandoned without ever clearing away – well, there were plenty of sharp edges to back into, like the rusty nail that tore the skin here. This was another lucky escape, and it looks and sounds much worse than it was.

Mostly, though, Gabe was careful not to leave clues. Bruises all healed pretty quickly, and the scars on the inside were invisible from the start. There's not much of a lesson to be learned from these, except maybe that sometimes humans can be every bit as bad as the worst that Greek mythology can offer.

This one's from the hellhound at the first Capture the Flag game. The water healed it up fast, but the wound was deep enough to scar. It's just a couple of faint white lines over the chest now. It's a reminder to never be too unguarded.

The snakebite from the chimera on the back of the calf goes with the faint burns, now concealed behind black locks of hair. Like the beast itself, this is a multi-headed lesson: the lion's head, the clearest takeaway, is faith in the gods, faith in the power of Poseidon's blood to save a life. The snake's head, the insidious, poisonous, and more dangerous of the two, is that nothing in this world is fair, and that lives can be ended on the whim of a petulant god.

This one, on the palm just looks like a scab now, but it could have been deadly. It almost was. It's the entry point of a pit scorpion's sting, and a reminder to be careful who to trust. However bad the gods may be, the alternatives are unfailingly worse.

These ones – a scratch on the ribs and a mark on the thigh – they're from a duel with Luke on the _Princess Andromeda_. Neither of them serious in physical terms, but knowing now what Backbiter was… they're like exit wounds for the soul. If saying that they're a lesson to work hard and keep practising sounds trite after such a brush with death, then at least know that it's a lesson well learned.

This one, the other shoulder, that's from Dr Thorn. If that carries a moral with it, then… well, it's complicated at the least. It was a difficult day, and if the same thing happened now, who's to say things would go any differently? The moral could be that things don't always work out, but in the long run, they did that time… so maybe it's that sometimes you just need some sheer dumb luck. It's done wonders in the past, anyway.

This one? Heh, er, that's a burn from Thalia's lightning at that game of Capture the Flag. It's all in the past now. Thanks to some mid-quest bonding and a whole lot less contact time due to her Hunt commitments. This is the least serious burn mark. Look: you can barely even see it anymore.

This black hair used to have a streak of grey in it from the weight of the sky, but that's gone now, stolen along with a life full of memories in the name of victory in a new war.

More burns now, ugly, serious ones all over the chest, from when the telekhines threw lava. The blood of the sea can't protect you from fire forever, after all. That was the day of the first kiss from Annabeth, though, so they've never hurt as badly as they should, even during those long and lonely days on Ogygia.

There are wounds that should have scarred, but through godly magic haven't. Here, on the same shoulder as the cut from Gabe's bottle, the claws of a Ker raked through the skin. A reminder to treasure the friends you have.

And there are the cuts that should never have scarred, but which, again through magic, have left indelible marks on the surface. On this arm, the scythe made the shallowest of cuts, but there's still a line where the skin has closed over, to prevent complacency or forgetfulness of what was lost in the Titan War.

After that, of course, there was the curse of Achilles, so nothing left any scars. There was pain and exhaustion, but nothing left a mark until the Titan War had ended.

Another lightning burn here. It's on the chest again, barely distinguishable from the burns the telekhines inflicted. The only tell-tale sign of which is which comes from the slight difference in pattern. It's from Jason, when he was possessed by an eidolon, and it's one of a pair with the scar on the back of the head from Blackjack's hoof.

What do you mean you can't see that one?

Ah, the hair must have grown out too far. It was there in the mirror a couple of weeks ago, after all. Here, hold out your hand. You can still feel the slight ridge where it healed.

If the scorpion sting says you have to be careful who you trust, these two say that sometimes, trust is all you have.

The next scar barely qualifies. It's a patch of skin on the palm of the left hand where the skin is slightly rougher than it should be and, for some reason, has never fully healed. It's only noticeable if you're looking out for it. It was earned clinging from a ledge fifteen feet down a pit in Rome, hanging precipitously over Tartarus. If there's a lesson to be learned, it's the ugly fact that sometimes, the worst wounds are the ones which are invisible, the ones which leave no trace on the outside of the body, the ones which keep you up at night for years after.

Now there are teeth marks. Not the most glamorous of wounds, sure, but they come from empousai, and would have been far worse if it hadn't been for Bob's intervention. The titan healed the bleeding when they were fresh, but something about the pit prevented the traces of them from clearing up. The same goes for the curses of the arai which the titan fixed with Damasen's help: there are tiny dents on either side of the chest, the width of an arrow, and more tooth marks from one of the demons on a leg.

These wounds are from Tartarus, a desolate and lonely place full of unimaginable horrors. To journey through it imparts no moral lessons, no teachings on how to be a better person, so these wounds carry a different message from the others. They're a reminder, every day and every night, to find a place open to the heavens, and to stay there a while to tell the sun and the stars that Bob says hello.

There are more claw marks now, from Akhlys, the goddess of misery. They're on his chest, distinguishable from the rest of the mass of mangled tissue only in colouration. They teach fear. They teach that some things are not meant to be controlled.

Somehow, there were no more wounds in the Giant War, or at least none which left lasting physical traces, but that means nothing.

The skin is like patchwork, a lifetime of experience etched out on the human body, all amounting to the man who stands before you today. The scars do not hurt and they are not dangerous: they are simply the physical memory of what has been.

All you can do is pray to the gods that there are no more scars in store, and that is an end to it.

Hmm?

What, this one? No, it's not from a monster. It's not really even a bruise.

No, don't worry. It'll clear up pretty soon.

Where is it from?

Um.

Well…

It's from Annabeth.

No, it wasn't a fight. No, don't worry, look, it's just…

Calm down, okay?

The thing is…

It's a hickey.

What, there has to be a lesson from _that_ too? Shouldn't you be able to just infer something important about how everything turns out for the best?

...fine. Aphrodite had better never hear about this, but…

The moral of the story is that love conquers all. And if you have that, everything will be fine in the end.

No more questions, please.

* * *

 **The two things I learned today were that the singular of Keres is Ker, and that there was an Estonian chess grandmaster called Paul Keres who is apparently considered by many people (many people who know about chess, anyway) to be the greatest chess player never to win a world championship. He narrowly missed out on playing in a world championship match five times: the first was cancelled due to World War Two, and then he finished as runner up in the Candidates' Tournament (the winner of which then played a match to become world champion) four times.**

 **I guess that if it ever got him down, he could at least take comfort in the fact that he wasn't a mythological spirit of the battlefield.**

 **Also, I've got a couple of reservations about the story as a whole. I feel like I've basically stopped any of Percy's wounds from healing and turned him into some kind of patchwork Frankenstein's monster. That's a bit weird, but it's necessary for the story to work the way it does. The real problem it causes is that, to me at least, it feels a bit repetitive. That might just be because I'm the one who wrote the thing and I've read it about fifty thousand times already, but it could also be because it _is_. I've left it as is, because I dunno how I'd fix that without altering the entire oneshot, but if you do have any stray thoughts about it, feel free to drop them in a review.**

 **And as always, thanks for reading.**


End file.
